Postdoctoral fellow and art history lecturer Melanie Michailidis, 46, was killed Friday night in a car accident in Ladue.

Michailidis, who also worked at the St. Louis Art Museum where she focused on Islamic art, was one of three individuals killed in the accident last week.

“She was an exceptionally bright and thoughtful scholar, an energetic and rigorous teacher, and always an extremely kind and generous colleague,” Elizabeth Childs, chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, said in a statement released by Washington University. “She will be deeply missed by friends, students and faculty alike.”

Michailidis held a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee and a master’s degree from the University of London. In 2007, she received a doctorate in Islamic art and architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Before coming to Washington University, she taught Islamic art and architecture at Carleton College in Minnesota and at the University of California, Davis.

She received an Aga Kahan doctoral fellowship at MIT, an Ittleson Fellowship at the National Gallery in Washington and a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Uzbekistan.

“Melanie was a deeply gifted and promising young scholar and will be greatly missed,” Brent Benjamin, director of the St. Louis Art Museum, said in a statement. “We are deeply saddened by this tragic loss.”